I’m just a regular person making about $70K a year in a big city, and I’ve recently felt incredibly powerless dealing with private companies. For instance, my landlord’s auto-pay system had a glitch that excluded my pet rent and water bill. I ended up with over $1,000 in late fees. Despite hours on the phone, it turns out their system doesn’t really do auto-pay and requires a fixed amount instead of covering the full rent. It feels like a scam, and my options are to pay the fees or potentially spend a fortune on legal action.
Another frustrating experience was trying to cancel my pest control service. I had to endure a 40-minute call followed by 35 minutes of arguing, just to finally cancel. There’s no online cancellation option, and the process felt like a timeshare sales pitch.
Why do ordinary people seem so unprotected against these shady practices, and how can we change this? How does one person even start to address these issues?
There’s been deliberate dismantling of social services.
I was married to a wealthy man. He was controlling and abusive, and had the police remove me from our home. It wasn’t legal, but the police have lost the records of whatever they did that night. I couldn’t get a lawyer to help me, he had access to my bank accounts and emptied them. I reached out to multiple domestic violence agencies - there is no shelter, there are no lawyers, there are maybe one or two therapists if you are lucky. But I’m basically completely helpless.